One Night on the Caribbean Queen

A Dark Investigation in 1920's Chicago.

Where our players discover their actions have brought an end to the world.

Lassiter has three tasks that the investigators must perform to shut the Eye of Yith. The Oracles (three large mirrors on platforms around the room) must be aligned, the Aperture (the hole in the ceiling to another place) must be properly adjusted and the Chant of Closure must be spoken. Lassiter tells them to speak the Chant last as it will attract the Evil Wind. Julius, Inspector Weigand and Rose climb up to the platforms to adjust the oracles and Jehiel Lugo leaps out from behind the large mirror and cuts Rose horribly with a knife. Julius shoots and hits Lugo who is snarling that this find will be his and his alone. The wind swells rapidly after the gunshot. Weigand draws his service revolver and finishes him off, the wind building even more, a strange piping cry heard distantly. Lugo falls to the floor with a loud thump. The blind Lassiter tells them to hurry!

Julius slides the adjustment on the Yaumweh and closes the Aperture down to the correct setting and the rest of the group aligns the Oracles. Martha intones the Chant of Closure (hastily scribbling in some corrections on Lassiter’s pronounciation). The wind is roaring at this point but with a blinding, pure white light the Eye of Yith closes. Refusing to leave the wounded Lassiter behind, the party makes its way back up to the light. Julius, falling behind slightly catches a glimpse of something horrific. A giant, unblinking black eye surrounded by tentacles and a cancerous miasma of flesh. Julius feels the eye upon him. Knowing him.

Scrambling out of the obelisk and back up the rig gunshots break out from the camp. Merrick Helmsley, the master’s student, has apparently gone insane and begun executing the villagers whose hum has descended in tone. Holding Rose back as she attempts to go to the man, Inspector Weigand peppers the man with a shotgun round dropping him soundly. Dr. Miguez, the Honduran doctor in a coma, has awakened with murderous intent and has begun killing as well though he appears to be held in a stupor. Julius, rattled from his experiences under the Earth, unloads his 1911 into the man. Dr. Miguez does not rise again. They find Dr. Jessica Burnham still cataloguing artifacts. She has clearly taken leave of her senses. Professor Summerfield continues having his double vision of himself writing frantically in Yithian.

Quickly harvesting a fresh eyeball from a recently dead village child, Professor Summerfield begins the ritual to bring them back through time. They arrive, somewhat unexpectedly, on the evening of August 20th, 1921. They can see, across the water, the Caribbean Queen still afloat. Remembering a date mentioned in Professor Smith’s Suicide note Julius rushes to the Navy Pier where he meets the enigmatic Albert Walters. He seems genuinely happy to see the group and says it is the last task he must perform before he rests. Julius asks him his task and he replies that he is a shepherd. When queried about the black bird (the Antenna) and why Albert gave it to Julius, Walters responds that it was so Azh’ Ghith, the Yith intelligence split between the three original players, could communicate with its peers, the other Great Masters. The Purple Flame was a device used by the Adherents to erase memory but it was also a device used to assay minds that could be useful to the Yith. It was used on children at the Foundation to recruit them as human calculators for the Yith. The machine was also used on Grace to erase her memories. Azh’ Ghith returned home through the open Aperture in the Antechamber of the Eye in Honduras. The stars burned into the backs of Grace, Julius, Professor Smith and (slightly later) Richard Monteith were marks from a machine the Ignotus was using to detect Yith minds within the people at the Caribbean Queen. The Ignotus discovered (through the time travels of Dominic Channing) that the Reaping was going to happen and they sought to capture one of the newly arrived Yith to extract the secrets of the universe from it. Through the sabotaging of Robert Wiedman, the columns on the boat were inscribed with sigils (written in Yithian) that would trap the Yith once they arrived. Underestimating their power, some Yith escaped, Azh’ Ghith split itself into three pieces and hid in different people to confound the Ignotus and a final intelligence was found in Jane Seymour, the lady who accosted Julius on that fateful night. The Ignotus were going to use this knowledge to allow their dark god, a being called the Reacher, that resides (and burns constantly) under Tremont. With the knowledge they gain they will free the Reacher and the world will end. Albert Walters asks them to prevent this by travelling to Braunschweig, Germany on February 23rd, 1912. They agree and he sends them there. The travel is much less painful.

Arriving in the bitter cold (Walters was nice enough to give them all jackets), they make their way up to the large mansion on the hill. Making their way toward the house, Rose and Julius spot someone moving off in the forest. Rose moves to investigate and the man is Dominic Channing, apparently looped back to watch himself begin a journey he is already upon. He runs off into the forest and disappears. Entering the mansion it is a virtual madhouse. A group of people watch a person convulsing on the floor. There is a large table brimming with drinks that contain various amounts of hallucinogens. A very young Vera Channing is here (currently using her maiden name, Vera Monaghan), convinced that she will marry Dominic (her intuition is correct). She seems much happier in this time then in 1921. They make their way into the Gallery for the maiden voyage of Mr. Channing. In an effort to make a distraction, Professor Summerfield grabs the swirling liquid in a glass phylactery carried by Mr. Channing and begins trying to chant himself through time. He blurs like a painting left out in the rain and disappears. Heavily narcotized, the crowd thinks it’s all part of the show and claps. Martha breaks out the fragment of mirror in which she saw movement way back at the Coffin affair. Using it in conjunction with a large mirror, she sees inhuman eyes peering at her from all the corners of the room. Before she can scream they pull her into the mirror and away…

Julius returns to his .45 and during the multiple distractions fires it into the back of Dominic Channing’s skull. The entire scene blurs and Julius wakes up to a knock at his door. It is Jane Seymour, again asking for a ride into Chicago. He excuses himself to go get dressed. He remembers a strange and terrible dream that he had. Rose is reading from one of her books when a scream from down the street draws her attention to the window. Professor Summerfield is perusing old texts and documenting his thoughts when he hears a scream as well. Martha and Graham are gleefully leaving a lovely dinner when people pointing up at the sky run past them.

Looking up into the sky they see the stars going out in great numbers leaving behind an impenetrable darkness. It is, they all realize, a giant, unblinking eye that signals the death of all mankind. Despite the horror of the event they all survive to perish slowly in the ashes that follow. Summerfield flits through time, writing furiously in his journal (the Codex he recovered) in Yithian telling his past self to not go through time, to not close the Eye of the Yith and to not kill Dominic Channing. He screams as he realizes his hands are not those of a human. Prior to leaving a time the Yith close the eye down for a later time. It is very much like shutting off the lights when you leave a room. And usually when they leave an apocalypse follows their mass migration.

The Yith have organized this series of events to thwart the Ignotus. THEY are the Great Race. THEY are the ones who will determine when the world shall end. THEY reign supreme over all things that crawl, walk and scuttle upon the earth.

There is a small discussion as to how Professor Summerfield managed to transport them to Honduras on December 26th, 1920, almost 9 months prior to arriving. The skies are overcast and a rain is beginning to drizzle. As Rose and Martha manage to compose themselves (one with praying and one with shrieks) a cluster of villagers pass by on, almost in a stupor, heading toward the Lassiter dig site. One of the villagers is a man who looks to have been severely cut upon. He is being led by a small boy, perhaps 12 years old, also who has been cut badly. He looks at the two women on the road and smiles saying in Spanish, “The end is becoming the beginning.”

Dr. Summerfield revisits the incidents that transpired at the dig site from his Journal:

November 12th, 1920 – The Expedition leaves a port in New York, heading approximately 1880 miles south by steam on The Royal Castor to Honduras.

November 17th, 1920 – The Expedition arrives in La Ceiba, Honduras, heading south by Auto.

November 19th, 1920 – The Expedition arrives at the initial dig site, labeled dig site L-1.

November 28th, 1920 – The first find is made to the pleasure of everyone! A crypt of sorts with skeleton bones shining with calcite deposits. There are a LOT of bones, but they appear to be from the Mayan civilization.

Friday, December 3rd, 1920 – The first of the strange metalwork doors are found in dig site L1-b. It is strange because, though there are Mayan hieroglyphics upon the door the crafting of the door seems very out of place for the Mayans and their distinct lack of metal elsewhere. Due to the nature of materials involved and the inappropriate tools brought by the expedition, a welder is sent for. The doors are carefully catalogued with rubbings and photographs, light permitting. In the interim digging continues laterally and finds another burial chamber also filled with bones.

Monday, December 6th, 1920 – A British welder, Simon Kressley, is brought in from Puerto Cortes and begins puncturing through the first of the metal doors. A large, deep cavern is found.

Wednesday, December 8th, 1920 – The cavern is fully explored and catalogued. Though dim, there is a small hole in the rock above letting light in. At the bottom of the cavern another dig site is started, designated L-2. Lassiter diverts all attention there, abandoning all other dig sites.

Saturday, December 11th, 1920 – The top of what appears to be some form of massive obelisk is found at dig site L-2. People are ecstatic.

Tuesday, December 14th, 1920 – The first disappearance occurs. Bradley Carr, assistant to Simon Kressley, vanishes without a trace. While a search party is organized, most of the expedition’s attention lies squarely on the find at L-2.

Wednesday, December 15th, 1920 – The first entryway into the structure is found and a hasty expedition is organized. The expedition includes:

Dr. Jonathon Lassiter

Dr. David Thornton

Dr. Javier Villaroel Miguez

Jehiel Lugo, Honduran representative from a nearby village.

Theresa Jones, archeologist and cataloguer.

Friday, December 17th, having had no sight of the expedition in over 48 hours another expedition is sent down, presumably to rescue them. This expedition includes:

Simon Kressley, a welder

David Easterling, a spelunker

Christopher Garay, a rock climber

Four Honduran workers whose names are unknown.

Sunday, December 19th, two of the Honduran workers returns to the surface and say that Mr. Kressley requires the use of his cutting torch and they are to retrieve it. A brief note scribbled by Kressley mentions that they haven’t found the initial party yet but that they may have tipped closed a large, metal hatch similar to the door that led into the cavern but set into the ground.

Monday, December 20th, Jehiel Lugo shows up unexpectedly. He claims that he was separated from the rest of his party and wandered back to the dig site. He looks in remarkably good health for a man wandering for 4 days. A written message from Kressley indicates they are making good progress but that the Honduran workers have abandoned them. Bad dreams begin to intrude upon the sleep of the expedition’s personnel.

Tuesday, December 21st, Nocodemo Sepulveda-Baca arrives to get an update on the dig site for the Honduran government.

Wednesday, December 22nd, the last message from Kressley arrives stating that they have made the discovery of a lifetime! Some sort of temple with an altar to strange gods and what appeared to be a library of some sort though the books appear to be made of metal. They mention that they have found Dr. David Thornton, though he seems in poor health.

Thursday, December 23rd, digging up at the L-2 site has revealed another chamber with another metal door that has signs of being recently opened. A third expedition is sent down and led by Professor Summerfield Kent, eager to see the discovery. The 3rd expedition includes:

Professor Summerfield

Elliott Brock, The Organizer of the expedition. He goes well armed.

Alfred Connelly, an archeologist

They try to get some of the Hondurans to go but all refuse to enter.

The group heads up to the dig site and finds a large number of the villagers (all of them?) milling about the camp. The group splits up with Rose and Martha attending to the comatose Dr. Miguez. Dr. Miguesz awakens briefly when Martha enters the medical tent and speaks in Spanish about the “Yaumwe” and that the eye must be closed (“El ojo debe estar cerrada!”). Though they don’t speak Spanish they have the phrase translated by Professor Summerfield.

Meanwhile, Professor Summerfield and Julius Coffin make their way over to speak with Dr. Burnham. She appears to be disconcertingly focused on cataloging the artifacts that were taken from the dig site at L-2. Some of the artifacts bear the strange runes similar to the ones written upon the columns at the Caribbean Queen and also within the Lassiter Codex. These symbols are intermingled with Mayan symbols as well. Dr. Burnham appears to have snapped, somewhat. She is obsessively cataloguing artifacts retrieved from around the dig site at L-2.

Jehiel Lugo, a man who accompanied the first expedition offers to come with and the party hesitantly agrees. The party gathers some climbing equipment out of one of the tents and they moved down into the cavern discovered at L1b and past the large metal door set upon the wall next to where it stood closed for untold eons. A short path leads down to the larger cavern where the Obelisk perforates upward from the bottom the floor of the cavern several hundred feet below. A rudimentary crane has been installed here to allow for people and objects to be lifted up and taken down safely. On the floor of the cavern they see the obelisk, almost a hundred feet long on a side, is covered in the strange script seen on the Caribbean Queen. They descend down a long, winding stone incline that opens up into a large room with a hexagram inscribed on the floor (it looks like random gutters until you are above it is so large). There is a strip of brightly colored cloth that marks one of the six exits from the room. The tunnel beyond the marked exit ends in a cave in. The party takes another route through a series of caves.

The party finds a cavern where a body has been flung up about 70 feet and impaled on an outcropping of rock. A panicked Dr. David Thornton runs into the cavern and seems relieved that Professor Summerfield is alive (“I’m sorry I left you behind, Professor! I’m so sorry!”). The party notices at this point that Jehiel Lugo is missing.

The caves continue onward and they reach the entryway to a great underground structure. At the entrance, six pillars greet the players. Julius remembers there were six statues at the Kingdom Cove Country Club and also six columns on the Caribbean Queen. They pass several doors and decide to try to open one to what looks like a writing room. There are thin sheets of metal with what looks like writing implements. They notice that, as opposed to the caves, there is no dust of any kind here. They make their way deeper into the Temple and make their way down to the ground floor. Through a window in the wall Julius can see a prone body next to a large machine upon a raised platform in the middle of a gigantic room. A strange hue of light shines in from somewhere the investigators cannot see. Julius calls to the man and a strange wind begins to pick up.

Reaching the floor of the great room they cross the humming, still liquid to the platform. The man is recognized as Jonathon Lassiter himself. His eyes have been scoured from his face as if with something terribly abrasive but he yet still lives. He tells the investigators that they must complete three things to use the Yaumweh (the large machine) to close the Eye of Yith. Looking up they see an alien sky with two suns hanging in the sky.

Where the investigators escape the beach house and use dark magics to travel to the past

Martha Hopwood bends over to decode the book she stole from her father, the title of which is, “The Journal of Time Traveler Prime, by Dominic Channing.” Over the course of the evening Martha rapidly begins her translations:

1912, February 23rd, Braunschweig, Germany. I think this is the time that I started from but it’s getting hard to tell. Even my notes seem…out of time. People are all gathered to see me off. I can’t tell if I am scheduled to leave or if I am watching myself go. My head hurts and I heard some thumping in the closet. Are they here? Have the Hounds found me at last? I saw them kill the clerk in the candy store (I don’t remember when!!). He died, screaming with pustules all over his body.

1862, Apopka, FL, Seen the temple, they are busy building and have newfound resources. I have spoken with a man named Chester Taggart, a friendly chap but very guarded. He mentioned that the Library is active and the Stone has begun talking to the people. They speak about a Reaping that will happen sometime in the 20s, the last one in this Age of Man. What happens after?

??, ?? I don’t know where I am but I think I just saw the Master of the Ants. An old man sitting by a stream that flows the wrong direction. He chants and looks at me as if I am a dead man. He may be right. I can hear the clattering everywhere I go now. I ask the man questions, to give him my reverence but he continues chanting and staring at me. I fear the day he stops his chanting. I feel safe here but already things are fading and I travel onward.

1894, June 10th, New York City, I handed off the note to Dufrane. The date of the Reaping is in the early 20s. The Great Masters will be coming. It will be our last chance. September, I think it is, although it could be slightly earlier. I find time travel to be quite exhilarating! I have yet to see the disorientation described in the manual but I will steel myself for when it comes. I feel I am being watched.

Julius and Rose are huddled in the underground library surrounded by books with dangerous sounding names. There is a Latin copy of the Necronomicon, even! Julius and Rose venture out to speak with the creature that was once Dominic Channing. The creature drops from the ceiling behind him and Rose, trapping them against the water. He asks Channing a series of questions with dubiously helpful answers:

Why are me and Grace here? “Reaping”
Have you heard of the Yith? “Great Race of Yith”, “Made me?”
What can we do for you? “Vera?”
“Tindalos”
Did you write a book about 35 years ago? “Prime”
Look at the tattoo “Star”
How are the Ignotus and the Adherents involved, Points to himself, “Ignotus”
What is the Reacher? “Salvation”

Vernon Gabrieux, a polite jailer, tells Martha what the Reaping is. It is a sacrificial bunch of people arranged for by followers of the Great Race Yith to allow their dark masters to jump in to. In response to her question from the Journal, he tells her Dufrane receives dreams from the Master of the Ants. Julius remembers a reference idea to ants in Professor Smith’s suicide note. As Gabrieux begins to leave the rest of the party jumps out and, at Julius’s behest, begin to shoot him down. They shoot him repeatedly, chop him up into different buckets and leave him out for the Channing monster to feed on. Grim work, but very likely to prevent Gabrieux from returning. Ever.

Heading upstairs they find the house eerily silent. They head upstairs and search Vera’s bedroom. Aside from the needle and vial in the wooden box by the side of the bed they also discover a letter in Vera’s bag:

Dearest Vera,

I feel like you are the only one I can talk to. Mr. O’Bannon is a cretin and treats me like scum. I suppose that is what I am. Scum. What’s more, a coward. I wish my father dead and yet I sit above him while he slumbers, helpless as a child. As helpless as I was as a child. Even with him comatose I cannot shake him from my mind. Him and my dear mother. Your kindness to me is something I cannot fathom a way to repay. It gives me a measure of comfort to think that he will wither away his days a mindless husk. The Reaping was to herald his return and I must rejoice in knowing that I have damned him to his purgatory. May he rot in hell. May hell rot around him. My dear Wesley will never know what I have had to do to keep him safe. I will do whatever it is to keep him safe.

Always yours,
Robert Wiedman

While the rest of the party is dealing with strange creatures and chopping up Vernon Professor Summerfield manages to hitch a ride back to Chicago with a friendly truck driver. Reaching the University of Chicago he heads to the anatomy lab and manages to secure a 5-year-old girl’s eye floating in a jar of murky formalin. He begins the preparations of the ritual to travel back in time which involves the eye being ground into paste and made into a candle.

Wednesday, September 21st,
Everyone sleeps in. A telegram arrives from Chatterton that announces Richard Monteith has committed suicide. A note found scribbled quickly on his body simply says, “I looked out the window.”

Proceeding to a remote area outside of Chicago, Professor Summerfield proceeds with the ritual, Piercing the Fourth Veil. The ritual is extensive and requires Summerfield to draw a Gorgon’s Eye in calves blood upon the ground (a hexagon within a double circle). Primitive and black words are spoken and a rift opens up pulling all the party through with a yank. Passing between times is a horrific experience and it leaves both Rose and Martha nearly unconscious on the other end.

Summerfield recognizes the place immediately. It is the base of the mountains East of Catacamas. The Lassiter Dig lies just up the road. Answers beckon!

Where our players find the Codex but are blockaded in the caves underneath the Channing Beach House

Carefully entering the Channing Beach house the players find the house disturbingly quiet. But for the bloody footprints on the floors and the marks of bloody palms upon the walls coming from the kitchen area the house seems vacant. Following the bloody footprints through the house a creaking from upstairs alerts them to a presence. Quietly ascending the stairs they find a room at the end of the hall with the door ajar. Upon the bed with disheveled hair sits Vera Channing. She looks drugged and indeed has a syringe with needle and an empty vial next to the bed indicating that she recently took something. She mentions that her husband is home and is downstairs. Out front headlights of several cars pull up to the front of the beach house. The players head through the house and into the kitchen. Preferring not to head out on the dock, they duck down into the basement. The blood trail leads obviously toward a bookshelf that swings open to reveal a dark passage down lit by caged lights. A key ring on the left wall as you descend allows access to the metal door at the bottom of the stairs. Spotted by the men entering the house the players lock the metal door behind them temporarily foiling the chase. They are in a work room that has been, for lack of a better way to say it, sprayed with blood. There is blood caked everywhere. In the center of the room is a utilitarian work bench upon which the unfortunate Graham Morgan was killed by Martha Hopwood. Heading even deeper down into the ground the players find rows of cells, all vacant. There is a larder here filled with restaurant-sized bags of food, tomato sauce, etc. Lard is spread over the floor here to cause a nasty surprise for the men chasing the party.

Martha begins exploring the place she finds herself in, a series of caves. She flashes back to having her father’s book and the Codex of Assad Agassi. She remembers Vernon Gabrieux approaching her with a black ring and just as he was going to put it on her finger she blacked out and awoke with her face pressed against a steel door. She wanders into the cave some, a disturbing voice comes from the darkness moaning, “Vera!”.

Fleeing through another door the party is in the caves. They close the door and lock it behind them. They begin wandering and eventually come upon Martha brandishing a knife and looking, for all intents and purposes, like a madwoman. They find they are hemmed in by pools of water (something brushes past Martha’s leg when walking through it). But they find the men chasing them force them to venture out into the gray, milky water heavy with silt and minerals.

Vernon extends his hand out to Martha and she decides to go with him. Weigand gets ready for a gunfight. A large tentacle pierces Vernon through the chest but it doesn’t seem to slow him down much. The men panic and open fire, wounding Vera Channing who had wandered down into the caves with the rest of the men. The foul creature that was once Dominic Channing howls in rage and begins killing the men at a rapid pace. Julius and Rose escape the fray, finding what appears to be an underground study.

Vernon leads Martha up to a jail cell and tells her she should stay there for her own protection. Weigand overhears their conversation as Vernon talks about “taking care of Graham”. Martha heads back down into the caves after Vernon retires upstairs to retrieve the book of her father’s that she stole and also the Codex of Assad Agassi. The rest of the players remain down in the caves listening to the disconcerting sounds of Dominic Channing cry as he consumes the corpse of his wife.

Where the Professor reappears and our party is drawn to the Channing Beach House where much will be revealed...

Saturday, September 17th, 1921
Professor Summerfield decides that it would be a good idea to put down the studies he has been engaging in and make a public appearance at a social event (he does not, however, leave the damnable book at home!). Making his way to the Coffin Affair he catches Dr. Eugene Weiss in the thick of a crowd of people. Deflected initially, he persists in attempting to speak with the Doctor in an effort to figure out what happened to the Lassiter Expedition. Weary of the pursuit the Doctor mutters a phrase, “Tumarik rashv’al”. Mentally stunned, Professor Summerfield recalls a series of events that give a clue as to what happened on that fateful expedition. He sees a great door opening into what appears to be a Library but not one made by any human hands. He remembers opening one of the tomes in the library and it is filled with several strange runes and symbols that bear a striking resemblance to the markings on the columns on the Caribbean Queen. He recalls seeing a great flash of light and…something…in the center of it that sends out a wave of blue energy and hearing the screams of his colleagues dying horribly. He remembers, at the last, seeing a purple flame with a calm, soothing voice that tells him to forget all that he saw. He awakens to the ministrations of the good nurse, Rose Johnson. She tells him that he was babbling about a purple flame and mentions that there was a child at the Hollingsworth Foundation for Underprivileged Children that was speaking of the same thing. Quickly asking her where the child was now, Rose responded the name of the hospital the child had been taken to. The Professor jets off after the child and quickly locates the lad, a boy by the name of Ronald Parsley. He reaches the hospital but sees two men of low breeding that follow him up the stairs in the hospital. He hides in the boy’s room and the two men complain about shuffling kids around late at night. They take the unconscious form of Ronald Parsley to the Wiedman Estate. Poking around to get a layout of the place, Professor Summerfield is discovered but manages to talk his way out of the guard raising the alarm having sufficiently spooked the guard about poisonous vines creeping up the wall of the house. The Professor returns home and finds his place being watched. He quickly heads for a motel.

Sunday, September 18th, 1921
The next morning he heads to his office at the University and finds a man there also who is intent on “bringing him in” and identifies him as a police officer. The two men load him into the car and begin driving. Summerfield blacks out momentarily and comes back to a grisly scene of both the men having exploded everywhere. Covered in the remnants of what had been two thugs only a moment before, the Professor sheds his outer jacket and heads home to his apartment. He slips in the back and showers, taking what he needs from his residence before seeking asylum in a hotel. He checks in and begins reading in the Cultes des Goules.

Tuesday, September 20th, 1921
Summerfield seems to have a waking somnambular episode and realizes that he has been at deciphering the dastardly book for over 48 hours and it is now Tuesday. Monday is lost to obsession.

Early in the morning Martha is awakened by the rushed return of Graham Morgan. He tells her that all will be explained to her but they have to leave. He is intent on getting her book that he took from her back. Under cover of darkness they leave Graham’s residence. Graham takes his revolver too.

Inspector Weigand received a call from the serving staff over at Graham Morgan’s house and reports that he came home quickly and took Ms. Martha Hopwood off. He heard something said about a Beach House. Weigand can hazard a guess as to where that is. Gathering up everyone, including the Professor (welcome back!), they drive out to the Channing Beach House located in Michigan.

Martha arrives at the beach house and is confronted by Vernon Gabrieux. Graham has once again (and for the last time) sold her out. Danielle is there too, a glazed look in her eye as she hangs on Vernon’s every word. Vernon offers her one last time to kill Graham to which she assents. Vernon lets fly a few things while they chat. He mentions Robert Wiedman and likely having to “fix” him soon (I apologize, I do not remember exactly what he was referencing!). He also mentioned that he stopped off to see an old friend, Robert Freeman, at Glittering Lakes Home for the Infirm. He is referring to, of course, the Burnt Man. Martha travels down into the cellar past a stained glass picture of a church with blood red windows (recalled long ago by Grace in a vision she had) and finds Graham laid out on a table and strapped down. After a few tentative strokes she inserts the blade into his neck and he bleeds out. Vernon, delighted turns away and approaches her. There is a flash of blue light and Martha comes to with her face pressed against the cold metal of a door. She has no memory of how she got there.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party pulls up to the beach house and finds it rather quiet…

Where our investigators receive visions, one in a dark dream another in...Florida?

Mission recap for 10/3/13

Monday, September 20th, 1921
Martha awakens early for her breakfast with Danielle. She meets her at a high class restaurant. Danielle, who normally seems very well put together, looks haggard and frankly almost paranoid. Martha tells Danielle about Graham going missing and she is concerned that he is on the run. Martha tells her about Vernon Gabrieux, and how he is very powerful and has likely kidnapped Graham. Danielle seems very interested in Vernon and mentions that she may have to pay him a visit. Martha mentions she is staying at Graham’s place. Danielle mentions that she will likely continue the exploration of the Ortho into what they found last weekend but is evaisive about any additional meeting dates.

Rose heads to work as normal at the Foundation. A small, precocious boy approaches her and asks her to track down a friend of his, Harold Denton. Rose recalls that the boy one of the records found in Dr. Weiss’s office. The small boy, Will Barnett, mentions that he and Harold were friends and that they promised to write each other when they got families. Harold got adopted by a family, the Setcliffs, a few months ago and he would really like her to track him down for her to give his letter to him.

Weigand heads into the office and begins getting one of the police officers to sit with Richard Monteith and translate as much of the runes in the trucks found in Indiana as possible. Rose contacts Weigand with the hope that he can help track down Harold Denton and his adoptive family. He finds an address and heads out there. The Setcliffs apparently were renting at the time they adopted Harold and moved quickly thereafter.

Martha heads back to Graham’s for a change of clothes and begins searching his library. She calls Gretta Spangler who recalls the Gabrieux family from Europe. She says that a man named Pierre Lareau was Vernon Gabrieux’s father and she is looking into anything else that she can find. She is not very impressed with Danielle and has mentioned that she will not be heading back to any Ortho meetings anytime soon.

Julius continues to convalesce in the hospital. When his mother learns of his condition she immediately gets him released from the hospital and gets him home immediately to take better care of him. Julius luxuriates in the loving hands of his mother nursing his physical wounds and harboring an even worse one. His worry about his missing cat.

Weigand calls Dr. Weiss’s office but doesn’t get much help from the secretary initially, but she seems very helpful after he tells her that he is tracking down a small boy, Harold Denton, to give him a letter from his pen pal. She doesn’t have a whole lot of information about the Setcliffs. Martha meets up back at Weigand’s office and, upon talking about the Caribbean Queen, puts forth the possibility that there was some sort of dimensional rift that swallowed the boat and the people up. This would explain the lack of mass. Also, with the runes on the columns, two hypotheses are put forth. Either it was a change in plans or it was sabotage. Monteith looks up at Martha and touches her on her forehead. Martha collapses and awakens in a cabin with an old lady dangling from a noose thrown over the rafters. She appears to be laughing. Martha’s attempt to rescue the lady results in her flailing and hitting Martha in the nose. She does not appear to be interested in being saved. She sees a workbench in the corner of the cabin with all sorts of mechanical things on it. She steps out of the cabin into the muggy sunlight. There is a large amount of humidity here. It appears to be a small town with primitive buildings all around. People look at her strangely. A man approaches her and asks her if she needs any help. She asks him where this is and he replies, Apopka, Florida. Behind her a small girl opens the door to the cabin that Martha just came out of and starts screaming. Another man rushes up to her and calls the small girl by name. Neva. Another name of one of the victims on the Caribbean Queen.

Richard Monteith seems to be back but somewhat shaken from his fugue state. He mentions that he was in a strange room writing things down on paper placed in front of him. There was a large window nearby that he was certain contained horrible things and that if he looked out the window something bad would happen. He remembers very little else and just wants to go home.

Tuesday, September 21st, 1921

That night Rose has a disconcerting dream. She is standing outside the Wiedman estate at night. In front of her is a man bent over some kind of machine. He turns toward her, and asks her if she can hear them screaming? He seems quite mad. Rose is inside the Wiedman estate now and the old man, Lionel Wiedman, normally in a coma, is sitting on his bed. As Rose enters he asks her if he can stop now. She looks up at the pressed copper ceiling and sees fiery letters above written laboriously over the course of years. She awakens, shaken.

A broken Richard Monteith heads back to Chatterton. As he walks down the hallway he appears very reluctant to look out of any window.

Where our Investigators are all together and some shadowy men attack Julius in his home

Sunday September 25th, 1921, 5:30pm
The group is over at Graham Morgan’s residence. Martha, completely soused, is brought back from the far shore of inebriation with food and coffee. A knock upon the door has her on her feet suddenly but it is merely Caden, the small man that follows Danielle (the leader of the Ordo) like a little puppy. He is immensely panicked that a police officer is here and things that Martha has been speaking to the police. She assures him that she is not. He insists that Danielle must meet her tomorrow for breakfast at 9am. The other characters find a French brand of cigarette (it has a fleur-de-lis on it) and, communicating this to Martha, believe it was a cigarette smoked by Vernon Gabrieux. Caden ducks out the door but not before Weigand overhears something about “what happened last weekend”. Martha attempts an explanation but it leaves Weigand suspecting that she is not telling him the truth.

After stopping off for a heavy breakfast to help clear Martha’s head, they find Vernon checked out of his Hotel room but in the Lounge having a bite to eat, presumably before he heads out of town. He nonchalantly deflects the questions of the inspectors but he does admit that he and Graham go way back and that he did stop in to see Graham last Friday (the day that Graham disappeared) but there is no obvious evidence linking him to the kidnapping.

The next stop is at the police department where Julius sees Richard Monteith, the reporter who came to introduce himself. He appears to be writing something furiously in a notebook but seems curiously unresponsive.

Getting late the investigators decide to drop Julius off at his apartment. Weigand, before he drives off, sees three men enter the building with purpose after Julius enters. Julius sees them in the lobby as the elevator door closes. Upon reaching his floor he ducks up a hallway to wait for them, drawing his 1911 pistol, and hoping that he remained unseen. Alas, the last man in line spots him and they advance on him, drawing their weapons. He fires once and hit one of the men in his belly. The men return fire and Julius is shot severely through his right shoulder and crumples to the ground. Weigand hears the gunshots above and with an armed Rose Johnson by his side, sets about to lay the hitmen low which he does with a roar from his shotgun turning the men into so much hamburger. The man who was shot by Julius, Toyle Branson, is still alive. He is “interrogated” by Weigand but the man doesn’t seem to crack. A cursory examination of the man’s background reveals that he is a “consultant” for the Hollingsworth Foundation. Julius is tended by Rose and looks into his apartment that has been tossed but the true horror is that Charles, mighty majestic Charles is missing. Toyle said he kicked the cat when they came into the apartment and the cat ran out the door.

Heading back to the station to finish up some paperwork, Weigand finds that Monteith is translating the symbols on the columns and finds that they translate as the following:
1) Traveller Bound
2) Cage Without Door
3) Nexus Closed
4) Sextet Constrained
5) The Way Obscured
6) Power Subjugated (scratched out and replaced by hand below)

He also hands him the medical records that were taken from Dr. Eugene Weiss’s office. There are only 3 signs that translate as the following:
1) Calculator (by far the most common)
2) Translator
3) Transmitter

Weigand also gets the name off the license plate of the car that followed him from the Coffin party on Saturday. It was registered to a man who worked for the Hollingsworth Foundation as a “consultant”. He goes to this man’s house and shows him a list of the men he left dead at Julius’s apartment. The man sneers at Weigand and says they should have been more careful. Weigand says that if anyone goes after his family he will come after them. He leaves a shotgun shell balanced on the man’s doorknob before he goes.

Where Our Investigators Reel In the Aftermath of the Coffin Affair

Saturday, September 24th, 1921
Weigand is followed home from the party by some thugs from the party. Turning to confront them they drive off and amble around town. Soon after, they drive up Weigand’s street, slowing down a bit just in front of Weigand’s apartment before driving off. Weigand wisely assumes this is a threat and quickly gets his family out of town the next morning.

Rose and Julius are at the hospital after hearing the Professor and the small child from the Foundation are both already gone. They drop off Elsa and decide to try and call on Dr. Weiss at his office to check on the condition of the boy, Ronald Parsley. Finding him not in Julius “accidentally” breaks a window while rapping upon it and enters the building. Rose, terrified, waits outside but brings him a torch. Finding a locked file cabinet Julius wrenches it open and finds medical records of approximately 37 children from the foundation. While there is nothing obviously wrong with the children there is a strange symbol (similar to the ones stamped into the beams on the Caribbean Queen) stamped at the end of the records on each of the children. There are only three different symbols present on the records, one of them vastly more common than the others.

Julius calls Weigand and obtusely tries to get him to throw an investigation into the break in at Weiss’s office but really just all but tells Weigand that he broke in.

Sunday September 25th, 1921
Martha meets Vernon Gabrieux for brunch. Prior to leaving the house she hides the metal shard and the piece of mirror from the guest bathroom at the Coffin estate. She hides it in a different place from where her book is. Meeting with Vernon, he says simply that if she wants Graham free that is all she has to say but that she will never have true knowledge about what happened with her mother. She tells him that she wants Graham back and he leaves abruptly saying she is of no further use to him. She heads back to Graham’s apartment to wait for him. She waits and drinks while she waits.

Rose, perusing through the medical records finds the phrase, “Patient may benefit from further testing” in each of them. Her and Julius meet up to take the records to Weigand. After a very painful and lengthy conversation with his mother, Julius gets Martha Hopwood’s name from his mother who further identifies her as “that gypsy artist”. Julius, Weigand and Rose all head over to Graham’s apartment where they find Martha fairly soused.

Where Nurse Johnson finds odd happenings and everyone gathers at the Coffin Estate

Tuesday, September 20th, 1921
Rose Johnson, a nurse working at the Hollingsworth Foundation for Underprivileged Children, goes to work and a most unfortunate event occurs. One of the children had found a way up to the roof and, despite her best efforts, leaps off the roof. Before he goes he mentions something about the purple flame being very loud. From the ministrations of Nurse Johnson the boy survives and is taken to the hospital. Seeing her spring into action, Dr. Weiss makes an offer to her and her friend Elsa to do some nursing work at the Wiedman Estate taking care of Lionel Wiedman.

Wednesday, September 21st, 1921
Rose and Elsa begin their normal work day at the Foundation and then head over to the Wiedman estate to take care of Lionel, the comatose patriarch of the family. They find that he is not comatose but merely non-responsive as his eyes dart around rapidly. Another nurse in the household (neither Rose or Elsa knew there were additional nurses in the house) comes screaming up the hallway and is quickly quieted and ushered into a room. “It’s not worth it!” she is heard to scream. She is quickly sedated.

Friday, September 23rd, 1921
Inspector Weigand gets two pieces of information as he is discharged from the hospital on the mend. The first is a property holding by the Channing family (Vera and Dominic, that is) in Michigan. It is a beach house. The second piece of information is slipped to Weigand by a fellow cop. They just picked up on a filing error that identifies the man who shot Officer Debbins on the Caribbean Queen was actually picked up a few weeks before prowling around outside the Monaghan house. He was fingerprinted, held overnight and released the next day but the fingerprints had never been entered into the computer. The man’s given name was Gavin Floyd. Heading immediately to the apartment without waiting for Inspector Beauleau, Weigand finds an almost empty Hotel room but for a suitcase. Inside the suitcase is (aside from clothes) is a train ticket originating in Orlando, Florida. There is also a pamphlet calling attention to a particular grave (6 rows down, 3rd grave in) at a graveyard in Orlando, Laurel Hill Graveyard.

Martha Hopwood heads back to her and her aunt’s apartment and begins cleaning up after calling her father who she suspects is behind everything that has happened with her book and with Graham. As per usual he makes her feel like a little child. He does mention that her mother and him had a similar situation to her and Vernon Gabrieux, an arranged marriage. She asks her aunt about it and she mentions that her sister married Martha’s father for something other than love and that she had become much more distant after marrying him. Martha heads over to Graham’s apartment and doesn’t find him there and there is no sign of struggle. He does have an open-ended train ticket to Arkham.

Saturday, September 24th, 1921
Professor Summerfield decides that it would be good to make a foray into the world and leave his dark texts behind so he accompanies Julius to the Coffin party. He recommends that they bring the Inspector also. Martha arrives relatively early hoping to pick the time and place of her meeting with Vernon Gabrieux. Rose also arrives early to welcome guests and begin introducing herself to them. Richard Monteith is feeling ill and does not attend. Julius greets guests at the door with his mother and father.

What follows is a list of things that happened in no particular order (I should have taken better notes!)

Martha speaks with Vernon Gabrieux and he makes several veiled threats about choosing between knowledge and the love she has for Graham. A young man (she later finds out it was Robert Wiedman) walks up to him and stabs him. He is remarkably unimpaired. The wound seems to move as Martha looks at it. He hands her a business card and she spots a chain tattoo on his wrist marking him as a member of the Ignotus Mantellum.

Professor Summerfield spots Dr. Weiss whom he has been trying (unsuccessfully) to get an appointment with the good doctor for about a week. Refusing to let him be the exchange between the two gets to be a little overbearing at which point Dr. Weiss whispers something in the Professor’s ear causing him to have a fit of some kind. Tending to the fallen man, Rose Johnson hears him call out for “No more Purple Flame.” When he comes to he does not recall the exchange at all. Later in the evening he bumps into Rose who mentions the purple flame to him and that a child at the Foundation mentioned it. The professor runs out into the night and heads to the hospital as fast as he can.

Julius gets pulled into his father’s office and gets some of his unlimited finances trimmed down to a mere $1000 per month. His father mentions to Julius that he “took care of” Grace. Dr. Weiss is heading in to talk with Julius’s father as he is exiting.

The party meets the man that Martha and Julius see in their respective visions. His name is Frederick Gessler, a man of Eastern European descent. He is apparently in town on business with Mr. Hollingsworth. He has a chunk of metal in his pocket which he incants over causing Julius and the Professor to get dizzy and begin seeing the dancing blue lights uncomfortably reminiscent of the Caribbean Queen.

Frederick Gessler appears to notice Julius and Professor Summerfield being affected by whatever he did and motions for Vanderhorn and Sahmil Nahas, the greeter from the Kingdom Cove Club. They follow Julius and the Professor into a bedroom where Julius ducks through a small door in the closet. Gessler, Vanderhorn and Nahas are all escorted back to Walker Hollingsworth. There Weigand picks up on the fact there is more to Hollingsworth than a cute old man.

Martha retrieves the chunk of metal that Gessler drops after Weigand bumps into him and kicks under a couch. She calls over Gabrieux who examines the chunk of metal as a dare to prove his power to Martha. He is struck by a sudden wash of power and runs for the nearest phone. Later, while Julius is talking with Rose out in front of the Coffin house, a car pulls up with what appear to be six armed men. They are here to take Julius away. Weigand keeps an eye on them while Julius and Rose (with Elsa in tow) head to the hospital where the child that jumped off the roof at the Hollingsworth Foundation was being kept. By the time they got there they found Summerfield and the boy were both gone. The boy was signed out of the hospital by Dr. Eugene Weiss. She then takes the metal chunk into the bathroom and dispels the magic and catches something in the mirror, something dark that is watching her but she can’t see what it was. She takes a piece of the broken mirror that could potentially give her a glimpse at what the thing in the mirror was.

Martha, spotting Weigand as a police officer, confides in him that she suspects Vernon Gabrieux has kidnapped her fiancee. She reports that her apartment was broken into and something was stolen. Gabrieux walks by her and brings in two of the armed men who came in a car. Escorted around by Weigand, they eventually give up and head out. As he leaves Vernon flips a cufflink that belongs to Graham to her. He reiterates that he is waiting to hear from her about a decision that she has to make. She can have understanding or love. Not both.

Where Professor Summerfield is summoned to the Caribbean Queen on that fateful night to meet an old friend.

August 21st, 1921 was a normal day for Dr. Summerfield. Heading into work in the early afternoon a letter from David Thornton, a fellow survivor from the Lassiter expedition, was in his mailbox. In the letter, Thornton told Summerfield that he had found a way to recover the lost memories from Honduras. Heading to the Caribbean Queen, he overhears a conversation with a man in a white pinstripe suit and an older man named Walby:

Wylie O’Bannon, a man dressed in a white pinstripe suit is speaking with an older gentleman (Jefferson Walby):
O’Bannon: How is business?
Walby: Booming. How about you?
O’Bannon: Can’t complain after tonight, less I’s to dot and T’s to cross. Speaking of booms, how are you doing putting out a certain fire?
Walby: (looks suddenly alarmd) Should we be talking about that here? Might someone hear?
O’Bannon: Who cares? It’s done, the Adherents are happy as pigs in shit about now. Feeling a bit on top of the world I would imagine. They don’t even know about us, and even if they did it’s too late. So what about the fire?
Walby: (sighs) After the explosion I am having a hard time getting anyone to back me.
O’Bannon: They didn’t bite at the hint of gold, eh?
Walby: Not as hard as we had hoped.
O’Bannon: Dufrane is getting a bit restless.
Walby: (fear in his voice) Did he say something? I’m working as hard as I can! I can’t move the earth by myself! We’re talking millions of gallons of water! I cant…
O’Bannon: Don’t soil your shorts, Walby, he’s not showing tonight. He would rather wait until…

At this point a drunken man spills a drink on the white suited man and he punches the drunken man. He leaves an impression in the man’s head from his ring in the shape of a triangle with a wavy line drawn down through the middle of it.

Mr. Wiggins, a tuxedo-wearing usher, announces a light show for the pleasure of all the patrons. Thornton walks in, visibly twitchy and nervous. He asks immediately if Summerfield brought the codex that he awoke with from Honduras. Thornton says that he has to wait for one other person, he begins talking so rapidly he becomes unintelligible. He finishes with the statement, “I feel like I’m slipping away.” He then apologizes for an unknown reason. A flash of light comes and suddenly Summerfield is being hung by his neck in an office somewhere. Just before he blacks out he takes out a letter from his pocket but it falls from his hand and slips underneath the desk.

Summerfield awakens suddenly in a sun-drenched meadow looking up at the sky. A small boy of 14 by the name of Walker is watching. He appears to be quite advanced for his age. He says he is waiting for Summerfield. He tells him about a cave that he and his friends found. Walker tells Summerfield that he is in Florida, the year is 1851. Walker’s friend, Lionel, is a flighty black haired boy. They walk to a meadow, chatting. Walker tells Summerfield that he was planning to go to Florida. Walker tells him that the “stone” told him many things over the last few weeks. He said that whoever goes to the library must pay homage to the “three eyes”. The first eye is a pool of water in a cave to the right. Walker leans down and anoints himself with the water. As Summerfield kneels to do the same, he experiences the same sickening feeling.

He awakes in a cell in an asylum. Summerfield talks with the orderly, a gentleman named Frances Keith. He tells Summerfield that he has been there for 17 days and that he awakes every day with memory loss. His journal and his pen are missing, which is quite discomfiting. There is a Dr. Gaston who has apparently been collecting the pages that Summerfield has been writing in his 17 days there at the hospital. He speaks with Margarie Applegate, an elderly woman who has a propensity for going wandering. She spouts many random things, including that she built the asylum, that she created the painting man but lost his voice somewhere. The painting man’s name is Albert Walters and he cannot speak. He paints pictures almost as a machine would, drawing a single row across the picture as opposed to sketching freely. She mentions that Summerfield has only just arrived and won’t be staying long. She says that he came in with another man who is on the 4th floor where they keep the violent people. Margerie calls Summerfield back over and shows him the picture that Albert is painting. It is a picture of a study, and as Summerfield looks at it he is transported there to the study where two other people await…(Summerfield drops in on [[Recap #5 | Recap #5]])